hypedragonhttps://hypedragon.net
MetalMusicMan's blog or whateverTue, 20 Feb 2018 16:28:57 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.4“Jimmy gets it done” – HOTS Raynor Guidehttps://hypedragon.net/jimmy-gets-it-done-hots-raynor-guide/
Sat, 18 Nov 2017 15:21:50 +0000https://hypedragon.net/?p=848Are you struggling to be effective as a damage-dealer in Heroes of the Storm? Can’t engage without dying as a Melee? Getting dived and blown-up as a Mage? You’re not asking for much, you just want to kill some folks in a video game. But it just isn’t working out.

You need someone strong, but not too complicated. Someone who looks at your positioning mistakes and says, “Hey man, that’s okay, here’s a little pick-me-up.” Someone who never met a problem he couldn’t solve without shooting at it repeatedly. Someone who is an All-American Space-Cowboy. You need Jim Raynor.

He’s not technical. He’s not flashy. But damn it, Jimmy gets it done.

We’ll start with his trait.

Trait – Advanced Optics

Raynor’s Basic Attack range is further than most other ranged Heroes, and his vision radius is further as well.

It might not look like much, but Raynor’s +1 range is actually really helpful.

A simple and passive trait, Advanced Optics gives Jimmy a natural range advantage over most other heroes in the game. Being able to see and shoot farther means that Jimmy can sit back, relax, and grab a beer as he right-clicks his opponents to death from a distance. As your opponents advance, try to maintain maximum spacing from them to keep Jimmy in a safe place so he can continue shooting.

This is a good time to mention “Stutter Stepping” — a tactic that a lot of people over-complicate, but isn’t actually all that hard to do. Essentially, it just means shooting while you move, which boils down to right-clicking the ground to move, then right-clicking an enemy to shoot them, then right-clicking the ground to move again. Stutter Stepping can take time to master, but if you start out by simply making sure that you shoot, run, shoot, repeat, you’ll have it down in no time. If you want a more detailed explanation on Stutter Stepping and right-clicking versus attack-moving, check out Bakery’s video.

Let’s talk about Jimmy’s abilities now. There are only two Basic Abilities that you actually need to worry about using, since one of them activates automatically.

Penetrating Round (Q)

Deals damage and knocks enemies back.

Penetrating Round knocks enemies away, giving Jimmy room to breathe.

Penetrating Round is Jimmy’s “get off me!” attack. If someone is getting in too close, use Penetrating Round to push them back and give yourself some space. It’s also useful as a disruption ability against the enemy team.

Be careful to avoid using this ability in a way that hinders your teammates. Raynor players often make the mistake of using Penetrating Round to knock back enemy minions and mercenary camps, which splits them up and makes it harder for teammates to damage them.

Since it pierces through multiple enemies, you can sometimes hit a few enemy heroes all at once with the shot. Just make sure that the knockback doesn’t actually end up helping the enemies to get farther away from your team. If you have any doubts, just keep right-clicking them to death, that’s what Jimmy does best.

If you have teammates in a flanking position, you can use Penetrating Round to knock the enemy towards your team, setting them up for a combo.

Inspire (W)

Inspire increases Jimmy’s attack speed as well as his teammates’ and allied minions’.

Jimmy is a natural leader. When he attacks fast, all of his nearby friends do too. Inspire works on friendly heroes and minions alike, which gives Jimmy a decent ability to push lanes and makes him pair well with other auto-attack heroes.

When to use Inspire varies on the situation; often, you want to save it for when an enemy is low to finish them off. Other times, you might want to use it just as your teammate lands a stun or root, to get that extra burst of damage during the lockdown.

At Level 7, “Revolution Overdrive” makes Inspire grant movement speed per-inspired hero. The extra run speed helps Jimmy and his teammates with both engaging and disengaging.

Adrenaline Rush (Automatic)

Adrenaline Rush is that little pick-me-up that you need when your life is down. It kicks in automatically when you fall below 30% health and heals for a substantial amount.

The relatively short cooldown of 30 seconds means it’s almost always there when you need it, provided you keep your distance and use Penetrating Round to keep enemies at bay.

Heroic Ability #1 — Hyperion (R)

Order the Hyperion to make a strafing run dealing damage, hitting up to 4 enemies. Also occasionally fires its Yamato Cannon on Structures for extra damage. Lasts 12 seconds.

WOAH, this thing is huge!

I recommend this as the primary pick because it lets Jimmy summon a giant friggin’ spaceship. The Hyperion flies in a straight line, constantly shooting enemies and structures below it. It’s great for team fights, pushing, or as a zoning tool to force the enemy out of an area.

The main downside to this heroic is that it has a fairly long cooldown time of 100 seconds, which means you need to use it wisely — you won’t have it again for a while if you waste it.

Heroic Ability #2 — Raynor’s Raiders (R)

Summon two Stealthed Banshees that attack an enemy. Each Banshee deals damage and lasts 22 seconds. Can reactivate the Ability to re-target the Banshees.

Unfortunately, the Banshees tend to get killed easily during the course of a fight, which limits this heroic ability’s usefulness significantly. Still, it has a solid niche as a harassment ability, particularly for catching slippery enemies or pressuring an enemy out of an area.

Talent Build

Jimmy doesn’t have much talent diversity; he knows what he’s good at and he sticks to it. Here’s the build that I recommend for the November 2017 Alexstrasza patch. Let’s go over the details a bit:

Level 1 — Seasoned Marksman

There’s almost no reason to pick anything but Seasoned Marksman in this tier. The raw damage that adds up over the course of a match is fantastic, and completing the quest grants you even more damage via an activatable ability that increases your attack speed by 40% for 3 seconds. Against dive-heavy comps where you absolutely need extra survivability, Give Me More can be an option, but Jimmy will lose a huge amount of damage for doing this and it’s not usually worthwhile.

Level 4 — Focused Attack

Another tier without much choice, Focused Attack is just too good to pass up. Every 10 seconds, Jimmy’s basic attack hits 60% harder, and the cooldown of this effect is reduced by 1 second every time you basic attack. Just sit back, get comfy, and right-click your enemies into oblivion. Like the previous tier, in very niche situations Vigorous Assault can be worth it for the added healing, but at a another big loss when it comes to damage.

Level 7 — Revolution Overdrive

Revolution Overdrive’s added movement speed on Inspire is extremely useful and will save you and your teammates more often than you might expect. Fight or Flight gives a nice defensive boost, making Adrenaline Rush provide armor and allowing it to be manually activated. It’s usually not as good compared to the added mobility of Revolution Overdrive, though.

Level 10 — Hyperion

As mentioned above, you will usually want to take Hyperion here.

Level 13 — Giant Killer

Giant Killer is another obvious choice and works well in almost every single scenario. Dealing raw, percentage-health damage makes Raynor great at poking down enemy tanks, which he can do from a safe range thanks to Advanced Optics.

Level 16 — Executioner

Executioner is ridiculous, providing 30% more auto-attack damage against enemies that are slowed, rooted, or stunned. The damage from this ability, combined with Giant Killer, Focused Attack, and Seasoned Marksman in the tiers before, turns Jimmy into a raging torrent of destruction who rains right-click-death upon any enemy foolish enough step within his range. Just make sure that you know which of your teammates have slows, roots, and stuns so you can prioritize their targets. Oh, uh, or… if you want a stun on Penetrating Shot, you could take Bullseye instead.

Level 20 — Nexus Frenzy

Did you read the last paragraph about Jimmy becoming the a torrent of destruction? He wasn’t done yet! At Level 20, Nexus Frenzy grants him 20% more attack speed and even more range. Sweet baby Thrall, have mercy. Whenever there is a Level 20 Raynor in the game, everyone on the opposing team is sure to be crying for mercy.

Notable Hero Synergies

Jimmy fits fairly well into most groups, but he shines when paired with characters who have persistent slowing abilities. His Executioner talent at level 16 works with slows, roots, and stuns alike, but generally it’s hard to keep roots and stuns going for long. Slows, on the other hand, are more widely available and able to be kept up for longer and applied more frequently. Johanna, Varian, Arthas, Tyrael, and Leoric all have base abilities that slow the enemy, so they are naturally great fits. Jaina pretty much slows everything she touches, so she and Jimmy are good buds.

Even if your team doesn’t have many innate slows, most heroes have a talent that they can pick to add a slow to their kit before level 16 when Raynor gets Executioner.

Hero Counters

Raynor’s main weakness is against heroes who have a blinding ability, since almost all of his damage comes from his basic attack. Cassia, Li Li, Johanna, and Artanis can give him a bit of trouble with their blinds, but playing smart and having good positioning will help you avoid those issues.

He can also have a bit of trouble getting dived-in on from heroes like Genji and Illidan. Usually, Adrenaline Rush and Penetrating Round will help you stay alive, but you will need to position well and keep your distance when it’s on cooldown. If you’re fighting against dive-focused enemies, be sure to keep poking them so that when they finally do get a chance to dive, you’ve already put some damage on them.

Maps

Raynor isn’t all that great at clearing minion waves, which means he can have a hard time clearing map objectives that focus on killing minions, such as Infernal Shrines, or defending against things like the Zerg on Braxis Holdout. This doesn’t make Jimmy a bad pick, you just need to be sure to add at least one hero with solid wave clear to your team.

On the flip side, his long range and persistent auto-attack damage make him a great candidate for defending against Bosses, the Garden Terror, Dragon Knight, etc. He can safely peck them down from a distance without much worry.

Jimmy is a simple man who enjoys the simple pleasure of shooting people in the face. Don’t let his lack of flare mislead you, he is an absolute beast on the battlefield.

He’s easy to pick up, but you’ll still be using him long after you become a seasoned veteran because…

Jimmy gets it done.

]]>“Burn in the Light!” – HOTS Johanna Guidehttps://hypedragon.net/burn-in-the-light-a-guide-to-playing-johanna-in-heroes-of-the-storm/
Wed, 15 Nov 2017 20:38:04 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=395If you’re only going to learn how to play one tank in Heroes of the Storm, make it Johanna. There’s really never a bad time to pick her, she’s good at everything a tank wants to be good at and she works well with any team composition.She has great displacement, crowd control, peeling, and she’s incredibly hard to kill thanks to her trait, Iron Skin. She’s easily the most generally effective tank in the game — other tanks might be more effective in certain situations, but no one fits into every team composition like our girl Jo does.

** updated for the November 2017 Alexstrasza patch **

First, let’s look at her trait.

Trait – Iron Skin (D)

Become unstoppable and gain a shield that absorbs damage for 4 seconds.

Iron Skin’s short cooldown and moderate duration make it frequently available for use. The ‘unstoppable’ effect makes Jo immune to all crowd control effects (stuns, roots, slows, knockbacks, silences, etc.)

Iron Skin is key to Jo’s playstyle, because it lets her play like an idiot. Jo loves getting dirty. She wants to get in the mix and make things happen. While other tanks are skirting the perimeter of a fight and waiting for the right moment, Jo is charging into the fray and disrupting the enemy’s positioning with Condemn (W). Johanna doesn’t wait for the right moment, she makes the right moment.

Iron Skin is both an excellent engage and disengage, but you’ll only be able to use it for one or the other due to its 20 second cooldown. A big part of playing Jo correctly is recognizing when you actually need Iron Skin. It’s tempting to activate it as you rush into a fight, but that means you’re opening yourself up to being targeted and bursted down, since the enemy team knows you won’t be able to use it again for 16 seconds after it wears off. More often than not, it’s best saved for use mid-fight or at the end of a fight to escape.

You won’t necessarily always use Iron Skin for its shield, sometimes you purely want the unstoppable effect. For instance, maybe the enemy Malfurion rooted your team and is about to setup a combo. Rather than waiting for the enemy players to drop all their damage, you might want to activate Iron Skin right away, breaking the root and allowing you to charge directly into the enemy team and disrupt their combo with a Condemn or Blessed Shield.

Preemptively using Iron Skin for the unstoppable effect can also be good if you are expecting a stun from an enemy Tyrande, Muradin, Kerrigan, etc. You can’t use Iron Skin if you’re already stunned, but activating it before an enemy uses their ability means they’ll never get the chance to stun you in the first place. If you have quick enough reflexes, you can even activate Iron Skin just as the enemy uses their stun (some stuns are easier to react to than others).

Now let’s go over Johanna’s abilities, which all deal low-to-moderate damage in a wide area. She doesn’t do a lot of damage to a single target, but she’s constantly hitting multiple enemies and that adds up.

Punish (Q)

Punish is a cleave attack that slows enemies. Punish is best used as a followup to Condemn (W), but it’s also quite useful for peeling. When your teammates need to run from the enemy, you can stay behind and use Punish to slow the enemy team and keep them from reaching your friends.

Condemn (W)

Jo about to smack Arthas with Punish after he gets sucked in by Condemn.

Condemn is Johanna’s go-to ability. Its huge radius, pulling effect, and brief stun are devastating; Jo can potentially disrupt the positioning of an entire enemy team and set them up for disaster. It’s up to Jo’s teammates to follow up Condemns with big damage, and a good Jo will give her friends plenty of opportunities to do so. Not every Condemn needs to setup a huge engagement though; sometimes you may want to section off a single target on the edge of a fight.

Always follow up your Condemns with Punish (Q). Condemn is powerful on its own, but if you combo it into Punish, your enemies will be crippled as they attempt to re-position themselves, which gives your team further opportunities to damage them.

Condemn is also very useful against minion waves. A nice trick that Jo can use when she’s in lane is to Condemn an enemy minion wave and drag it to a more favorable position. Jo can pull the enemy wave back, forcing the enemy team to fight closer to her own Towers for extra defense, or, she can pull the enemy wave forward, allowing her own wave closer to the enemy’s Towers and adding pressure to the lane.

Shield Glare (E)

Deal damage to enemies and cause them to miss Basic Attacks for 1.5 seconds.

Shield Glare’s range is surprisingly far.

Be sure to frequently use Shield Glare on auto-attack heroes, such as Illidan, Raynor, Valla, Falstad, etc. Don’t just spam it, though. Use it during key moments when the enemy team focuses one of your friends; if the enemy Tyrande lands a stun with her Lunar Flare (E), blind her Raynor and Valla teammates so their followup damage is minimized.

On maps like Cursed Hallow or Dragon Shire, Jo can use Shield Glare’s long range to safely interrupt enemies channeling on objective points.

Even though it doesn’t do much damage, Shield Glare can help score kills on low HP enemies that would otherwise be able to flee to safety. With the “Holy Renewal” talent at 16, Shield Glare doubles as a powerful self-healing ability during team fights.

Heroic Ability #1 – Falling Sword (R)

You should probably never use Falling Sword, as Blessed Shield outclasses it heavily. While the 2 second stun and 50% slow are strong, the move takes far too long to land, which makes it difficult to combo with. It does have a fun gimmick in that it can be used as an escape (you can activate Falling Sword and fly over terrain to escape a fight), but that’s about all it’s good for.

Heroic Ability #2 – Blessed Shield (R)

Deal damage and stun the first enemy hit for 1.5 seconds. Blessed Shield then bounces to 2 nearby enemies, dealing damage and stunning them for 0.75 seconds.

Blessed Shield is a long ranged, short cooldown, multi-target stun. You do have to aim it, though.

Blessed Shield is fantastic. It synergizes wonderfully with Condemn, which itself already stuns multiple enemies for 0.25 seconds. If you combo three enemies after Condemn pulls them in with Blessed Shield, you’re getting a 1.75 second stun on the primary target and a full 1 second stun on the two bounce targets. And then you still get a Punish followup to slow their escape after that!

If the enemy team is running away, you can reverse the process and initiate with Blessed Shield, stun three of them, then run in and Condemn into Punish combo.

The move’s short cooldown of 60 seconds means it willalmost always be available during team fights.

Since it’s available so often, it can also sometimes make sense to use Blessed Shield defensively. If your team is fleeing from a dodgy encounter with the enemy, you might consider using Blessed Shield to aid the escape. You can even stay behind after the Blessed Shield for further distance-making via a Condemn into Punish, then activate Iron Skin to cover your exit.

Talent Build

Level 1 — Laws of Hope

Laws of Hope is almost always just too good to pass up. Jo already has more than enough innate defense, so the passive regen and active heal over time are exactly what she needs. The active’s cooldown is only 40 seconds, so you will be able use it frequently. In niche situations against very auto-attack-heavy teams, Reinforce can see some use, but Hold Your Ground fills a similar space and works against ability damage as well as auto-attacks.

Level 4 — Conviction

Conviction’s added speed during Condemn makes it that much easier to catch enemies and set up combos, so it’s the go-to. However, on maps such as Infernal Shrines where you are especially focused on killing skeletons for the objective, Eternal Retaliation can be a solid choice. Hitting so many targets can give Condemn a near constant up-time, but beware that your mana will deplete very, very quickly. I’ve never been able to find much of a use for Sins Exposed, it just isn’t very much damage and either of the other two talents will almost always be better.

Level 7 — Blessed Momentum [or] Subdue

Since Jo’s base kit is so strong, Blessed Momentum allowing her to use the Condemn and Punish combo more frequently is a no-brainer. Subdue’s baseline +20% slow is surprisingly strong; it’s become my go-to pick over Blessed Momentum in most games. If you hit 4 enemies at once and complete the quest, the slow no longer decays, which is amazing. Zealous Glare is niche and usually not worth it at all. While the potential of a 3-second blind is amazing against auto-attack enemies, Jo will only be able to get that bonus on one enemy at a time, which can lead to tunneling and a neglect of her primary role of disrupting and setting up combos.

Level 10 — Blessed Shield

As mentioned above, this is probably the only pick you should ever make.

Level 13 — Holy Fury

Holy Fury is great because you are going to constantly be doing damage to all of the enemies around you, which really adds up in long fights. It also gains extra damage for each enemy hero hit by Condemn, but this happens pretty naturally so you don’t need to worry about it much. Should you want a bit more control and burst, you could instead choose Blessed Hammer. You can get more Punish damage with Roar, but this extra damage isn’t very appealing compared to the other two options.

Level 16 — Holy Renewal

This is probably the most flexible tier overall, though it’s hard to argue with the usefulness of Holy Renewal. It can pump out some serious self-healing in team-fights. Still, Imposing Presence can be a very solid pick when facing teams that are heavy with auto-attack heroes. Fanaticism is probably the least-likely pick in the tier, but its speed-boost and extra Iron Skin duration can potentially make it a worthy pick.

Level 20 — Indestructible

It’s really hard to pass up Indestructible. The breaking of will that occurs when the enemy team finally manages to kill Jo, only to realize she laughs in the face of death and gets a GIANT shield, is amazing. I’m not a fan of the Blessed Shield or Falling Sword talents at 20, but Blinded by the Light can definitely see some use if you really need to protect your teammates that extra bit. It’s a stronger version of Storm Shield that has its cooldown lowered each time Jo hits an enemy hero with Shield Glare.

Notable Hero Synergies

In my group of friends, we refer to “Jaina, Jo, Malf” as “The Holy Trifecta”

Jo works well with everyone, but mages such as Jaina or Kael’thas are particularly devastating with her. Their huge area-of-effect burst damage spells play wonderfully off of Johanna’s Condemn > Blessed Shield > Punish combo. Throwing a Malfurion into the mix as the support character makes this composition extremely potent, as Malfurion’s ‘Entangling Roots (E)’ can combo Condemned enemies, locking them in-place for followup damage.

While Jo definitely plays best with mages, that’s not to say she doesn’t do well with auto-attack heroes. For instance, Raynor does particularly well with Jo if he picks up the “Executioner” talent at 16; the slowing effect on Jo’s Punish makes enemies take 30% more damage for 3 seconds from Executioner-empowered auto-attacks.

And speaking of auto-attacks, LiLi is another great support pairing for Johanna. Since they both have Blinding abilities, together they can make an enemy auto-attack Assassin’s life miserable.

Hero Counters and Map Disadvantages

Johanna brushes away adversity, “like chaff before the wind!” She isn’t really countered by any character and she does perfectly well on every single map in the game.

Johanna is an extremely effective and versatile character with a relatively low skill cap. She works with every team composition, she does well on every map, and she has no hero counters. What more could you ask for? This is a character that every Heroes of the Storm player should have in their pocket.

“The Crusade calls!”

]]>Tanks and Active Mitigation in World of Warcraft: Legionhttps://hypedragon.net/active-mitigation-in-world-of-warcraft-legion/
Fri, 06 Jan 2017 17:29:57 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=731Someone recently made a post on MMO-Champion asking whether a specific ability counted as “Active Mitigation” and he received a lot of misinformation. Apparently, many players have an outdated understanding of the term, and to make things worse, the most recently updated Wikis on the topic are 3-4 years old. Yikes! Since I’m so annoying such a helpful guy, I will clear things up.

“Active Mitigation” vs “active mitigation”

Many players use the term “active mitigation” to refer to any move a Tank has that can be activated to reduce incoming damage. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, sort of — the term “Active Mitigation” actually means something different than “active mitigation”.

What is “Active Mitigation” in Legion?

In Legion, the term “Active Mitigation” refers to a single, specific ability that a Tank must use as a “counter” to specific Boss abilities. These Boss abilities are designated as “Mitigation Checks”.

If you fail to use Active Mitigation against a Boss’s Mitigation Check, you receive an additional negative side effect. Some examples of Mitigation Checks are:

The second Boss in Black Rook Hold has “Vengeful Shear”; if she lands it on you and you don’t actively mitigate it, you get a stacking debuff that makes you take extra damage.

The last Boss in Neltharion’s Lair has “Molten Crash”; if you fail to actively mitigate it, you fly far, far away when he hits you.

God King Skovald in the Halls of Valor has “Savage Blade”; If you fail to actively mitigate it, you take a bleed over time.

The first Boss in Vault of the Wardens has “Dark Strikes”; if you fail to actively mitigate it, the boss gets a damage absorb shield.

Your designated “Active Mitigation” ability can be checked in the Dungeon Journal (as long as your character is a Tank spec).

Every Tank in Legion has only one ability that counts as “Active Mitigation” against Mitigation Checks. Yes, there are other “active abilities” that “mitigate” but they are not considered “Active Mitigation” as they do not counter Mitigation Checks.

For Warriors, their Active Mitigation is “Shield Block”, while “Ignore Pain” is not Active Mitigation and does NOT count for Mitigation Checks.

For Demon Hunters, their Active Mitigation ability is “Demon Spikes”, while “Fiery Brand” is not Active Mitigation and does NOT count for Mitigation Checks.

So basically, all of this confusion is just because the term “active mitigation” was previously used as a blanket term to cover any ability that could be used to reduce damage, whereas now “Active Mitigation” is used to specifically refer to a single ability that satisfies a mitigation check. Maybe it might have been more clear if the developers called the current “Active Mitigation” something else, like a “Mitigation Counter” ability?

In closing, here is a list of the Active Mitigation move for each Tank Specialization in Legion:

Vengeance Demon Hunter — Demon Spikes

Guardian Druid — Ironfur

Brewmaster Monk — Ironskin Brew

Protection Paladin — Shield of the Righteous

Protection Warrior — Shield Block

Blood Death Knight — Blood Shield / Death Strike / Marrowrend (“recently used Death Strike” buff gained after using Death Strike or Marrowrend — more info here)

]]>How to use any controller with SFV on PS4https://hypedragon.net/how-to-get-almost-any-controller-or-stick-to-work-with-street-fighter-v-on-playstation-4/
Fri, 26 Feb 2016 17:55:15 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=679Brook Super Converters are awesome! For only $35, they bypass Street Fighter V’s PS3 Legacy Controller nonsense and they also avoid the dreaded 8-minute PS4 timeout issues (after a firmware update). They do not require a PS4 Controller/DS4 to use!

I have personally confirmed the white PS3 to PS4 adapter as working with a PS3 Madcatz TES stick and Qanba/Eightarc Fusion and Q4 sticks (in PS3 mode). Generally, the adapters will work with any wired PS3 or Xbox 360 pad/stick that is not auto-detect. They even have PS2-to-PS4 converters for you PS2 pad users! However, the devices do NOT work with PS360+ PCBs (because they are auto-detect).

Once you have the adapter in your hands, you will then have to do a FIRMWARE UPDATE to update the device and enable Tournament Mode. This process is what prevents the 8-minute timeout and disables turbo settings. The firmware update process is easy and takes about 15 minutes, but it’s a little unintuitive due to the device’s LED color being confusing. Basically, the device’s LED color when updating is “Purple”, but the device’s color when Tournament Mode is enabled is “Blue and Red” (which is Purple, lol). So just be aware of that when doing the update process, it was confusing for me at first.

At any rate, here’s what you need to do to purchase an adapter and download the required files for the update process:

Please note that you DON’T need a PS4 controller to do the firmware update (I did it on my PC without a PS4 Pad and I had no issues). I just used the stick itself and it all worked fine.

When you’re all updated and have tournament mode enabled, the light will always be PURPLE when plugged in and working. That’s it!

]]>The SFV Guidebookhttps://hypedragon.net/the-sfv-guidebook/
Sat, 20 Feb 2016 14:13:15 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=671With Street Fighter V’s release, there are going to be a lot of new players looking to pick up the game. There’s a plethora of tutorials available out there, but most of them are far too long and difficult for new players to digest. This guide aims to explain the game’s basic and intermediate mechanics as clearly and concisely as possible, in hopes to get more players in on the action.

[The Poison Orb] just puts you in a poisoned state, but it doesn’t have any kind of hitstun or anything. You could walk through it and hit me. You don’t have to respect it.

“You’re gonna take the poison”, because the attack puts you in a poisoned state no matter how it makes contact with you (it doesn’t matter if it hits you or if you block it).

Only the horizontal poison orb behaves this way; at 6:53, we see that the vertical/lobbed orbs have a standard hitbox that makes contact as a traditional Street Fighter projectile does. These vertical orbs also apply the poisoned state (but require an actual hit to do so).

Combofiend also mentions that hitting F.A.N.G. causes the poisoned state to go away. This means it will be up to F.A.N.G.’s opponent to stop the poison damage, losing life for each second that goes by while F.A.N.G. remains untouched.

At 6:18, we see Combofiend activate F.A.N.G.’s V-Trigger, and the poison from that attack appears to persist even if F.A.N.G. gets hit. It’s mentioned in the Capcom Unity blog that his V-Trigger causes opponents to be poisoned as long as they are near them, so perhaps this poison effect can be removed simply by putting space between you and F.A.N.G.?

At 10:43, F.A.N.G. uses a physical attack with his arms that also applies the poisoned state to his opponent when it hits them. Combofiend wasn’t lying when he said, “you’re gonna take the poison.”

The new poison mechanic, which is unique to F.A.N.G., definitely seems potent and interesting! I’m predicting that we’ll see some tense hit-and-run matches in Street Fighter 5’s future

]]>HotS Hero Concept: Diablo 2 Paladinhttps://hypedragon.net/hots-hero-concept-diablo-2-paladin-astreon/
Sat, 21 Nov 2015 19:55:21 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=547I would love nothing more than for Diablo 2 characters to make their way into Heroes of the Storm. Just for fun, I’ve been experimenting with a hero concept for the Diablo 2 Paladin, specifically that of a Vindicator variety (Smiter).

Level 13
— Holy Freeze [passive]: Deal 12 damage per second to nearby enemies and slow their move speed by 3% per second, stacking up to 15%.
— Unyielding [Charge Talent]: Charge can be used again for 2 seconds after it hits an enemy.
— Herald of Zakarum [Holy Shield Talent]: Holy Shield also reduces Ability Damage taken by 50% for its duration.
— Relentless

]]>Competitive Gaming and the Spectatorhttps://hypedragon.net/competitive-gaming-and-the-spectator/
Wed, 04 Nov 2015 22:26:18 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=216Over 11 million people concurrently watched the League of Legends World Championship last year, and LoL is only one game among many. DotA 2, StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, and Counter-Strike all garner consistently high viewership, and fighting games like Street Fighter and Super Smash Bros. are steadily growing thanks to their strong grassroots communities.

But what about engagement? Looking further into the viewership statistics for LoL Worlds 2014, the average time watched per-viewer was only 67 minutes. Considering that the broadcast was over five hours long, it seems that most people aren’t paying very close attention to what’s happening. But this relative lack of engagement isn’t surprising, because League of Legends is a terrible spectator game.

For just a moment, let’s simplify this and use Chess as an example. Chess is a great game, but to a casual viewer, it’s very difficult to understand. They’re aware that the various pieces seem to be able to move differently, but they don’t know what those movements are, or why the players’ decisions are significant. Without a detailed understanding of the game’s mechanics, the viewer will find little interest in spectating. Essentially, the viewer needs to know how to play Chess in order to enjoy watching it.

Now, let’s look at a screenshot from the 2015 League of Legends World Championship Grand Finals.

This isn’t even a particularly busy moment.

With so many things onscreen, how does the viewer know what to focus on? It’s clear that there is a red team and a blue team, but what is each player doing? Most of them are covered up by the health bars, so you can’t even see what actions they’re taking.

Why is that guy fighting a rock-turtle-thing in the woods? I DUNNO, JUNGLE STUFF!? Oh look, now he’s attacking a strange tree with a light bulb on its back! [image source]The viewer needs to pay attention to Summoner Spells, ability cooldowns, player levels, item purchases, masteries, map positioning, towers and structures, wards and vision… the list goes on. And we haven’t even talked about The Jungle yet. Good luck explaining Baron, Dragon, and all of the other minutia that lives in The Jungle to an inexperienced viewer! There’s no way for a viewer to visually intuit those things. They’re forced to seek out that information from an external source.

All of this detracts from the viewer’s ability to focus on the gameplay, which isn’t very straight forward to begin with. Last Hitting is incredibly awkward and counter-intuitive, warding is poorly explained and incredibly tedious, guard towers have no visual indication of range and strange target priority… once again, the list goes on.

To anyone who hasn’t already put a significant amount of time into playing League of Legends, the whole thing is a complex and confusing mess. Although, to be fair, most MOBAs are just as awkward and confusing. It’s practically a hallmark of the genre.

Blizzard’s newly released MOBA, Heroes of the Storm, falls prey to many of the same issues that League does, but it succeeds greatly in redesigning the jungle, and that makes a huge difference for the spectator. Compare the answers to these two questions:

Gazlowe with an Ogre Siege Camp in Heroes of the Storm.

In League of Legends, what does defeating Baron Nashor or The Dragon do?

In Heroes of the Storm, what does defeating the Ogres or the Knights do?

Answer: it causes Ogres or Knights to fight for your team.

Once the viewer sees a pair of giant Ogres throwing stones at the enemy’s structures, no further explanation is needed.

Let’s look at Street Fighter 4 now. Notice how much simpler the user interface is–there are only a few things vying for the viewer’s attention. The health bars and the timer at the top of the screen, and the super and ultra meters at the bottom, are the only major focal points on the UI. This allows the viewer to pay more attention to the interactions of the characters.

The slight curve in the middle of Street Fighter 4’s health bars allows viewers to easily identify the half-way point of a character’s health.

Street Fighter 4 is an incredibly complex game with deeply technical concepts. Option selects, auto-corrects, plinking, 1-frame links… not to mention 44 unique characters, each with numerous special moves and attacks. And yet, all a viewer needs to do to enjoy watching the game is look at who’s beating up who. The viewer will understand concepts like zoning, anti-airing, footsies, throwing, and blocking automatically simply by watching the game. There’s no need to grasp the most intimate technical details of the game’s systems in order to understand what’s going on.

Of course, some genres just have an easier time with this than others. It’s certainly easier to keep things simple in a Fighting Game or a First Person Shooter than it is in an RTS or a MOBA. Still, it seems that many developers don’t have the spectator at the forefront of their design, despite setting out to build a competitive game and planning for it to be spectated. Why aren’t developers prioritizing this more in their designs?

Good design doesn’t seem to matter. It should, but it doesn’t. Riot doesn’t care that League of Legends is nearly unwatchable for spectators who don’t play it, because, surprisingly,it’s easier to get everyone to play a game than it is to design it well.

League of Legends is free to play, but Riot makes huge profits from in-game purchases of characters and character skins.

That’s a somewhat terrifying thought, but it seems to be true, and that’s Riot’s genius. League of Legends is 100% free to play and anyone can go download the game and play it in a matter of minutes. LoL may not be your favorite game, but it’s accessible, it’s free, and your friends are probably already playing it.

It doesn’t matter that other games might be more watchable or well-designed, because while other games might be better for casual spectators, League of Legends is pulling spectators from the 27 million people who already play the game daily.That’s an incredibly powerful fanbase, so much so that it pretty much invalidates the issue of alienating the uninitiated. Who cares if people who don’t play LoL can’t understand watching it when you have a playerbase of that magnitude?

What does it say about the future of competitive gaming if good marketing is more important than good design? Is the competitive success of a game dependent on every spectator also being a player? It seems like that shouldn’t be the case… but who’s to say?

Riot, apparently.

]]>Thoughts on Diablo, Botting, Trading, and Competitive Viabilityhttps://hypedragon.net/on-diablo-botting-trading-and-competitive-viability/
Mon, 26 Oct 2015 22:15:12 +0000http://hypedragon.net/?p=89Diablo 3, for all its terribleness on release in 2012, has actually developed into a pretty good game over the last year or two. I give a lot of credit to the dev team for pushing through and making something good out of a project that could have easily been abandoned. Since the 2014 release of “Reaper of Souls” and the introduction of Seasons, I’ve logged in each Season had a blast creating a new character, finding the best items, and slaying demons with a few of my buddies. It’s pretty impressive that Diablo 3 can call me back at all, considering how it initially violated the franchise that I loved so much.

Despite all the good that the RoS team did improving Diablo, they still made one huge error: removing trading. Their reasoning was essentially, “trading items encourages botting, so trading must die”. Of course, this was masked with, “trading isn’t as fun as killing monsters, so in order to encourage you to kill monsters, we are removing your ability to trade.”

The Auction House was a bad idea, but trading was not. If Diablo 3 had used a more “grass roots” trading system, like D2 did, I think the game would have been better for it. Unfortunately, the devs decided to kill ALL TRADING because of the Auction House’s failing.

As someone who lived through the full spectrum of botting and duping in Diablo 2, I find that idea ridiculous. Even if trading was bad for the game (it’s not), it wouldn’t get rid of botting. There’s no practical way to remove botting from an ARPG. The genre’s randomised design directly rewards time spent over anything else, which encourages botting, and the simple gameplay makes creating bots easy.

Randomized monsters

Randomized levels

Randomized items

Randomized stats on items

There is no amount of skill that can overcome the Random Number Generator, only time.

Look at any other game in the genre and you will see rampant botting, duping, hacking, etc. Borderlands, Path of Exile, Dungeon Siege, Titan Quest, you name it. Diablo was not, and never will be, an exception.

People are always going to bot in ARPGs, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t play them. They’re great fun! They just aren’t great for taking seriously. ARPGs have a simple, exploitable design because they are fun and casual at their core. The devs know that, and for 90% of the people who play them, botting is a total non issue. Most ARPG players don’t even know about botting or hacking. They’re just logging on for a couple hours here and there to kill a few monsters.

For some historical context, let’s look at Diablo 2. You basically had to bot and maphack in that game, because everyone did. You might think that was a bad thing, but Diablo 2 was actually better off because of hacking, and a large part of that was owed to the game’s trading system keeping things in check.

I played Diablo 2 for over 10 years, trading and dueling and eventually botting and maphacking, and having a blast with all of it. I had full “perm” original copies of bugged items that I could have sold for hundreds of dollars if I ever wanted to cash out, but I valued their rarity and significance more than the money. There was a sense of pride, or even clout, that came with being the owner of certain items.

Diablo 2’s itemization was amazing, but the drop rates on many items were abysmally low. Botting fixed this and created a thriving economy for trading, making better items more accessible to the masses. Duped runes and unique rings became an in-game currency. The market ebbed and flowed, rising and falling with all of the intricacies of a digital stock exchange for gamers. And this all happened without ever having been planned for by the developers. It was organic, it was wild, and it was amazing to be a part of.

And before you can say, “over-saturated market”, there were things that kept that in check, too. Everyone could get a Vampire Gaze, but if you wanted a 1.08 Vampire Gaze in a post-1.08 patch where it could no longer drop, you needed to trade multiples of your most valuable items and runes for it. This created super-rare items that drove the economy and gave players who retained said items an almost iconic status.

Did you hear XX_ZonBewbz69_XX traded away his 1.08 Arkaine’s Valor? I heard he got 200 SoJs for it!

Trading created a way for more dedicated players to rise above the crowd. The best traders became the most wealthy and had the best gear. The added depth was welcome by those who wanted to take the game more seriously, considering the relatively unskillful and casual nature of ARPGs.

All of this created interest for the game where there otherwise wouldn’t have been any. It gave players a way to define themselves and feel connected to a community. You can’t look back on Diablo 2 and how great it was without acknowledging the role of duping, botting, and trading.

Now, as a thought experiment, let’s say that Diablo 2 never allowed players to trade items. What would have happened then? I don’t think D2 would have survived long if it never had trading, and I don’t think D2 would have had the amazing trading economy that it had without botting.

So that brings us back to the present, and back to Diablo 3, where there is still no trading.

What’s the point of having those great items if they only hold value in a single account’s bubble? You can’t trade your powerful item to someone else, you can’t get more powerful items for yourself by amassing currency. Nothing you do has any value in a larger sense, because everything that every player finds is only theirs and can never have an affect on the rest of the community in any way.

The popular Diablo 3 bot, “RoS Bot”.

And even with no trading, players are still botting in Diablo 3. Because even though they don’t gain anything from it in a larger sense, it’s still the most efficient way to improve their character and get the best loot.

Personally, I’ve never botted in Diablo 3 because I don’t really see the point, but I’m not surprised that lots of people still do and I don’t expect Blizzard to do much about it. Not because they’re unwilling or because it’s not possible, but because it’s logistically and financially impractical. That’s the reality. On top of this, in removing trading, they removed the one in-game element that had any hope of keeping botting in check.

With all of this in mind, it astonishes me that anyone who plays Diablo 3 would take it seriously. I love Diablo, and honestly I really like Diablo 3 at this point in its life… but I don’t take it seriously.

Well, I hate to break it to you all, but this was the only direction for the game to go in from the beginning. There is no real competition. There is no point in trying to “be good” at this game. There will always be botting, and without trading to provide depth to the game and regulate the inevitable botting and hacking, the game will always end up in a stale place.

So play Diablo 3 for fun, create a new character each season. But stop wasting your time trying to take a casual game seriously. Accept Diablo 3 for what it is: a fun game that’s great to play off-and-on with your friends.